Coldingham

Coldingham High
Street

Coldingham lies just under a mile inland from the North Sea coast
of Scotland, and just under ten miles from the English Border. It sits astride the
A1107, which provides a more scenic alternative to the A1 for visitors driving
up through the Borders via Eyemouth.

This picture postcard village has an unusually ancient history, and
one that is unusually closely tied with England. This even extends to its very
English-sounding name. Some have suggested that this comes from the Old English
for "village of the people of Colud", presumably a
reference to an early laird.

An alternative view, that Coldingham was actually referred to on
Ptolemy's Roman map of Britain as Colania, has found
a following, but overlooks the distance that settlement is marked as being from
the sea. Alternative views that Colania became
Lanark or Crawford seem more
likely. (Continues below image...)

The Beach at
Coldingham Bay

What is beyond doubt is that Coldingham was established at a very early date. A
monastery was founded two miles to the north in 635, open to both monks and
nuns by a Northumbrian Princess called Aebbe. She later became a saint,
St Aebbe. In 683 fire largely
destroyed the monastery. At the time some held this to be divine retribution
for what was, perhaps euphemistically, called "disorderly behaviour" among the
monks and nuns. Whatever the truth of this, the monastery may have been rebuilt
on the same site before being destroyed by Vikings in 870.

Coldingham's story closely reflected that of the monastery here,
and the priory that followed it,
on a different site in what is now the village of Coldingham, from 1098. The village grew
alongside the priory from the 1100s until the
Reformation in 1560.
This was despite attacks by invading English armies in 1216, 1537 and 1547, and
despite a fire raised at the priory by
its own prior, William Drax, in 1430. This was, allegedly, an attempt by him to
conceal his theft of a large amount of money being carried by a messenger from
the Scottish King to the English King.

Even the Reformation in 1560 and the
Union of the Crowns of Scotland in 1603 did not end the priory's role as an
attractor of trouble for the village. In 1650, troops opposing
Cromwell were positioned
in the priory to block his advance into Scotland. After a two day siege by
Cromwell's artillery the
village and its priory were badly in need of rebuilding. One result is the
local saying that there isn't an old building in the village that doesn't
contain stone removed from the ruins of the priory.

Coldingham is well worth spending a little time in. The remains of the priory
are especially worth visiting, and if you do nothing more, make sure
you stroll along the lovely High Street, and pop into the "Coldingham Luckenbooth",
an attractive cafe/shop/information point/post office near the entrance to
the priory. We didn't notice at the time, but a photograph taken on our most
recent visit in 2016 showed that the mercat cross we'd photographed standing
beside the main road through the village in 2006 had disappeared, leaving
only its base. It's unclear why this happened, and whether the cross is likely
to be restored to the village at any point in the future.